Contents

Antonio Scarpa publishes Tabulae neurologicae ad illustrandam historiam cardiacorum nervorum, noni nervorum cerebri, glossopharingei et pharingei, the first work to give an accurate depiction of cardiac innervation, and to include the discovery that the inner ear is filled with fluid.[1][2]

Ernst Chladni publishes Über den Ursprung der von Pallas gefundenen und anderer ihr ähnlicher Eisenmassen und über einige damit in Verbindung stehende Naturerscheinungen ("On the Origin of the Pallas Iron and Others Similar to it, and on Some Associated Natural Phenomena") in which he proposes that meteorites have their origins in outer space.[3]

Erasmus Darwin publishes the first edition of Zoonomia, a medical work in two volumes that touches upon proto-evolutionary concepts, notably arguing that all extant organisms are descended from one common ancestor. The work will later influence his grandson, Charles Darwin.

1.
1797 in science
–
The year 1797 in science and technology involved some significant events. Smithson Tennant demonstrates that diamond is a form of carbon. Joseph Proust proposes the law of definite proportions, which states that elements always combine in small, lagrange publishes his Théorie des fonctions analytiques. Giovanni Battista Venturi describes the Venturi effect, october 22 – André-Jacques Garnerin carries out the first descent using a frameless parachute, a 980 m drop from a balloon in Paris. Thomas Bewick publishes the first volume, Land Birds, of his History of British Birds

2.
1794 in architecture
–
The year 1794 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings. Date unknown - French confectioner Louis Jules Benois, forefather of the Benois family of artists, musicians, and architects, arrives in Russia following the French Revolution. Construction of houses on the edge of Blackheath, London, designed by Michael Searles, begins, The Paragon, South Row and Montpelier Row, the interior of St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig in Saxony is remodeled by Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe in the neoclassical style. Needle of Rijswijk, monument at Forest of Rijswijk, Netherlands, the second Royal Presidio Chapel at the Presidio of Monterey in Spanish Alta California. The chapel, now known as the Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo, is the first stone building in the province, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. The Radcliffe Observatory building at Oxford, England

3.
Science
–
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations, disciplines which use science, like engineering and medicine, may also be considered to be applied sciences. However, during the Islamic Golden Age foundations for the method were laid by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws, over the course of the 19th century, the word science became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, Science in a broad sense existed before the modern era and in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge. In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to each other, for example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought. This is shown by the construction of calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible. For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and they were mainly speculators or theorists, particularly interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans. A clear-cut distinction between formal and empirical science was made by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, although his work Peri Physeos is a poem, it may be viewed as an epistemological essay on method in natural science. Parmenides ἐὸν may refer to a system or calculus which can describe nature more precisely than natural languages. Physis may be identical to ἐὸν and he criticized the older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism. He was particularly concerned that some of the early physicists treated nature as if it could be assumed that it had no intelligent order, explaining things merely in terms of motion and matter. The study of things had been the realm of mythology and tradition, however. Aristotle later created a less controversial systematic programme of Socratic philosophy which was teleological and he rejected many of the conclusions of earlier scientists. For example, in his physics, the sun goes around the earth, each thing has a formal cause and final cause and a role in the rational cosmic order. Motion and change is described as the actualization of potentials already in things, while the Socratics insisted that philosophy should be used to consider the practical question of the best way to live for a human being, they did not argue for any other types of applied science

4.
Technology
–
Technology is the collection of techniques, skills, methods and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, the human species use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The steady progress of technology has brought weapons of ever-increasing destructive power. It has helped develop more advanced economies and has allowed the rise of a leisure class, many technological processes produce unwanted by-products known as pollution and deplete natural resources to the detriment of Earths environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and raise new questions of the ethics of technology, examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, and the challenges of bioethics. Philosophical debates have arisen over the use of technology, with disagreements over whether technology improves the condition or worsens it. The use of the technology has changed significantly over the last 200 years. Before the 20th century, the term was uncommon in English, the term was often connected to technical education, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The term technology rose to prominence in the 20th century in connection with the Second Industrial Revolution, the terms meanings changed in the early 20th century when American social scientists, beginning with Thorstein Veblen, translated ideas from the German concept of Technik into technology. In German and other European languages, a distinction exists between technik and technologie that is absent in English, which translates both terms as technology. By the 1930s, technology referred not only to the study of the industrial arts, dictionaries and scholars have offered a variety of definitions. Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 Real World of Technology lecture, gave another definition of the concept, it is practice, the way we do things around here. The term is used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics. Bernard Stiegler, in Technics and Time,1, defines technology in two ways, as the pursuit of life by other than life, and as organized inorganic matter. Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems and it is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material, virtual technology, such as software and business methods. W. Brian Arthur defines technology in a broad way as a means to fulfill a human purpose

5.
Antonio Scarpa
–
Antonio Scarpa was an Italian anatomist and professor. Scarpa was born to a family in the frazione of Lorenzaga, Motta di Livenza. An uncle, who was a member of the priesthood, gave him instruction until the age of 15 and he was a pupil of Giovanni Battista Morgagni and Marc Antonio Caldani. Under the former, he became doctor of medicine on 19 May 1770, in 1772, for a time he chose to travel, visiting Holland, France and England. When he returned to Italy, he was professor of anatomy at the University of Pavia in 1783. He remained in that post until 1804, when he stepped down to allow his student Santo Fattori to assume the chair and he chose to visit the University of Pavia, upon which he inquired as to the whereabouts of Dr. Scarpa. He was informed that the doctor had been dismissed because of his opinions and his refusal to take oaths. In 1821, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. During his lifetime he became a man, acquiring a collection of valuable paintings. He was a bachelor, and fathered several sons out of wedlock. In his career, he earned a reputation for ruthlessness, destroying his enemies, toward the end of his life, Antonio Scarpa suffered from a stone in his urinary system. This caused an inflammation of his bladder, which resulted in his death and he died in Pavia on 31 October 1832. After his death, his reputation was attacked, and even marble stones erected in his memory were defaced. After his death, his assistant Carlo Beolchin performed an autopsy which was documented in a detailed report. As an incredible and questionable act of homage to the great scientist, the head is still exhibited at the Museo per la storia dellUniversità di Pavia. Dr. Scarpa published a number of treatises that were widely respected. De structura fenestrae rotundae auris et de tympano secundario, anatomicae observationes, his first published work and it was printed in 1772, shortly after he joined the University of Modena. In 1789 he published Anatomicæ disquisitiones de auditu et olfactu, a study of the hearing and olfactory organs and he published Tabulae neurologicae in 1794, which was the first work to give an accurate depiction of the Hearts nerves and to show cardiac innervation

6.
Ernst Chladni
–
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni was a German physicist and musician. His most important work, for which he is labeled the father of acoustics, included research on vibrating plates. He also undertook pioneering work in the study of meteorites and so is regarded by some as the father of meteoritics. Although Chladni was born in Wittenberg in Saxony, his family originated from Kremnica, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, Chladni has therefore been identified as German, Hungarian and Slovak. Chladni came from an family of academics and learned men. Chladnis great-grandfather, the Lutheran clergyman Georg Chladni, had left Kremnica in 1673 during the Counter Reformation, Chladnis grandfather, Martin Chladni, was also a Lutheran theologian and, in 1710, became professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg. He was dean of the faculty in 1720–1721 and later became the universitys rector. Chaldnis uncle, Justus Georg Chladni, was a law professor at the university, another uncle, Johann Martin Chladni, was a theologian, a historian and a professor at the University of Erlangen and the University of Leipzig. Chladnis father, Ernst Martin Chladni, was a law professor and rector of the University of Wittenberg and he had joined the law faculty there in 1746. Chladnis mother was Johanna Sophia and he was an only child and his father disapproved of his sons interest in science and insisted that Chladni become a lawyer. Chladni studied law and philosophy in Wittenberg and Leipzig, obtaining a law degree from the University of Leipzig in 1782 and that same year, his father died and he turned to physics in earnest. One of Chladnis best-known achievements was inventing a technique to show the modes of vibration of a rigid surface. When resonating, a plate or membrane is divided into regions that vibrate in opposite directions, Chladni repeated the pioneering experiments of Robert Hooke who, on July 8,1680, had observed the nodal patterns associated with the vibrations of glass plates. Hooke ran a bow along the edge of a plate covered with flour. Chladnis technique, first published in 1787 in his book Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges, the plate was bowed until it reached resonance, when the vibration causes the sand to move and concentrate along the nodal lines where the surface is still, outlining the nodal lines. The patterns formed by these lines are what are now called Chladni figures, similar nodal patterns can also be found by assembling microscale materials on Faraday waves. When Chladni showed the technique in Paris, Napoleon set a prize for the best mathematical explanation, sophie Germains answer, although rejected due to flaws, was the only entry with the correct approach. Variations of this technique are still used in the design and construction of acoustic instruments such as violins, guitars

7.
Peter Simon Pallas
–
Peter Simon Pallas was a German zoologist and botanist who worked in Russia. Pallas was born in Berlin, the son of Professor of Surgery Simon Pallas and he studied with private tutors and took an interest in natural history, later attending the University of Halle and the University of Göttingen. In 1760, he moved to the University of Leiden and passed his doctors degree at the age of 19, Pallas traveled throughout the Netherlands and to London, improving his medical and surgical knowledge. He then settled at The Hague, and his new system of classification was praised by Georges Cuvier. Pallas wrote Miscellanea Zoologica, which included descriptions of several new to science which he had discovered in the Dutch museum collections. A planned voyage to southern Africa and the East Indies fell through when his father recalled him to Berlin, there, he began work on his Spicilegia Zoologica. He explored the Caspian Sea, the Ural and Altai Mountains, the regular reports which Pallas sent to St Petersburg were collected and published as Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs. They covered a range of topics, including geology and mineralogy, reports on the native peoples and their religions. In 1776, Pallas was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Pallas settled in St Petersburg, becoming a favourite of Catherine II and teaching history to the Grand Dukes Alexander. He was provided with the plants collected by other naturalists to compile the Flora Rossica, a Russian flora, and started work on his Zoographica Rosso-Asiatica and he also published an account of Johann Anton Güldenstädts travels in the Caucasus. The Empress bought Pallass large natural history collection for 2,000 rubles,500 more than his asking price, during this period, Pallas helped plan the Mulovsky expedition, which was cancelled in October 1787. Between 1793 and 1794, Pallas led an expedition to southern Russia, visiting the Crimea. He was accompanied by his daughter and his new wife, an artist, servants, in February 1793, they travelled to Saratov and then downriver to Tsaritsyn. They spent the spring exploring the country to the east, and in August travelled along the banks of the Caspian Sea, in September, they travelled to the Crimea, wintering in Simferopol. Pallas spent the spring of 1794 exploring to the southeast, and in July travelled up the valley of the Dnieper, Pallas gave his account of the journey in his P. S. Pallas Bemerkungen auf einer Reise in die Südlichen Statthalterschaften des Russischen Reichs. Catherine II gave him an estate at Simferopol, where Pallas lived until the death of his second wife in 1810. He was then granted permission to leave Russia by Emperor Alexander, and returned to Berlin and his grave is preserved in the Protestant Friedhof I der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde in Berlin-Kreuzberg, south of Hallesches Tor

8.
Meteorite
–
When the object enters the atmosphere, various factors like friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate that energy. It then becomes a meteor and forms a fireball, also known as a shooting/falling star, meteorites that survive atmospheric entry and impact vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a large enough to create a crater. Meteorites that are recovered after being observed as they transit the atmosphere or impact the Earth are called meteorite falls, all others are known as meteorite finds. As of April 2016, there were about 1,140 witnessed falls that have specimens in the worlds collections, there are more than 38,660 well-documented meteorite finds. Modern classification schemes divide meteorites into groups according to their structure, chemical and isotopic composition, meteorites smaller than 2 mm are classified as micrometeorites. Extraterrestrial meteorites are such objects that have impacted other celestial bodies and they have been found on the Moon and Mars. Meteorites are always named for the places they were found, usually a town or geographic feature. In cases where many meteorites were found in one place, the name may be followed by a number or letter, the name designated by the Meteoritical Society is used by scientists, catalogers, and most collectors. Most meteoroids disintegrate when entering the Earths atmosphere, usually, five to ten a year are observed to fall and are subsequently recovered and made known to scientists. Few meteorites are large enough to create large impact craters, instead, they typically arrive at the surface at their terminal velocity and, at most, create a small pit. Large meteoroids may strike the ground with a significant fraction of their escape velocity, the kind of crater will depend on the size, composition, degree of fragmentation, and incoming angle of the impactor. The force of such collisions has the potential to cause widespread destruction, the most frequent hypervelocity cratering events on the Earth are caused by iron meteoroids, which are most easily able to transit the atmosphere intact. In contrast, even relatively large stony or icy bodies like small comets or asteroids, up to millions of tons, are disrupted in the atmosphere, and do not make impact craters. Although such disruption events are uncommon, they can cause a concussion to occur. Very large stony objects, hundreds of meters in diameter or more, weighing tens of millions of tons or more, can reach the surface and cause large craters, such events are generally so energetic that the impactor is completely destroyed, leaving no meteorites. Several phenomena are well documented during witnessed meteorite falls too small to produce hypervelocity craters, various colors have been reported, including yellow, green, and red. Flashes and bursts of light can occur as the object breaks up, explosions, detonations, and rumblings are often heard during meteorite falls, which can be caused by sonic booms as well as shock waves resulting from major fragmentation events

9.
Outer space
–
Outer space or just space, is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including Earth. The baseline temperature, as set by the radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7 kelvins. In most galaxies, observations provide evidence that 90% of the mass is in a form, called dark matter. Data indicates that the majority of the mass-energy in the universe is a poorly understood vacuum energy of space which astronomers label dark energy. Intergalactic space takes up most of the volume of the Universe, there is no firm boundary where outer space starts. However the Kármán line, at an altitude of 100 km above sea level, is used as the start of outer space in space treaties. The framework for international law was established by the Outer Space Treaty. This treaty precludes any claims of sovereignty and permits all states to freely explore outer space. Despite the drafting of UN resolutions for the uses of outer space. Humans began the exploration of space during the 20th century with the advent of high-altitude balloon flights. Earth orbit was first achieved by Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union in 1961, due to the high cost of getting into space, manned spaceflight has been limited to low Earth orbit and the Moon. Outer space represents an environment for human exploration because of the dual hazards of vacuum. Microgravity also has an effect on human physiology that causes both muscle atrophy and bone loss. In addition to health and environmental issues, the economic cost of putting objects, including humans. In 350 BCE, Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested that nature abhors a vacuum and this concept built upon a 5th-century BCE ontological argument by the Greek philosopher Parmenides, who denied the possible existence of a void in space. Based on this idea that a vacuum could not exist, in the West it was held for many centuries that space could not be empty. As late as the 17th century, the French philosopher René Descartes argued that the entirety of space must be filled, in ancient China, there were various schools of thought concerning the nature of the heavens, some of which bear a resemblance to the modern understanding. In the 2nd century, astronomer Zhang Heng became convinced that space must be infinite, extending well beyond the mechanism that supported the Sun, the surviving books of the Hsüan Yeh school said that the heavens were boundless, empty and void of substance

10.
Radcliffe Observatory
–
Radcliffe Observatory was the astronomical observatory of the University of Oxford from 1773 until 1934, when the Radcliffe Trustees sold it and built a new observatory in Pretoria, South Africa. It is a Grade I listed building, today, the observatory forms a part of the Green Templeton College of the University of Oxford. The observatory was founded and named after John Radcliffe by the Radcliffe Trustees and its tower is topped with a statue by John Bacon of Atlas holding up the World. Because of the conditions, weather, urban development and light pollution at Oxford. Eventually that site, in Pretoria, also became untenable and the facility was combined with others into the South African Astronomical Observatory in the 1970s, the building is now used by Green Templeton College off the Woodstock Road and is a centrepiece of the college. Oxford & New York, Oxford University Press, media related to Radcliffe Observatory at Wikimedia Commons

11.
University of Oxford
–
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university located in Oxford, England. It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris, after disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two ancient universities are frequently referred to as Oxbridge. The university is made up of a variety of institutions, including 38 constituent colleges, All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. Being a city university, it not have a main campus, instead, its buildings. Oxford is the home of the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the worlds oldest and most prestigious scholarships, the university operates the worlds oldest university museum, as well as the largest university press in the world and the largest academic library system in Britain. Oxford has educated many notable alumni, including 28 Nobel laureates,27 Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, the University of Oxford has no known foundation date. Teaching at Oxford existed in form as early as 1096. It grew quickly in 1167 when English students returned from the University of Paris, the historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188 and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190. The head of the university had the title of chancellor from at least 1201, the university was granted a royal charter in 1248 during the reign of King Henry III. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled from the violence to Cambridge, the students associated together on the basis of geographical origins, into two nations, representing the North and the South. In later centuries, geographical origins continued to many students affiliations when membership of a college or hall became customary in Oxford. At about the time, private benefactors established colleges as self-contained scholarly communities. Among the earliest such founders were William of Durham, who in 1249 endowed University College, thereafter, an increasing number of students lived in colleges rather than in halls and religious houses. In 1333–34, an attempt by some dissatisfied Oxford scholars to found a new university at Stamford, Lincolnshire was blocked by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge petitioning King Edward III. Thereafter, until the 1820s, no new universities were allowed to be founded in England, even in London, thus, Oxford and Cambridge had a duopoly, the new learning of the Renaissance greatly influenced Oxford from the late 15th century onwards. Among university scholars of the period were William Grocyn, who contributed to the revival of Greek language studies, and John Colet, the noted biblical scholar. With the English Reformation and the breaking of communion with the Roman Catholic Church, recusant scholars from Oxford fled to continental Europe, as a centre of learning and scholarship, Oxfords reputation declined in the Age of Enlightenment, enrolments fell and teaching was neglected

12.
Erasmus Darwin
–
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor. His poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and he was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family, which includes his grandsons Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. Darwin was a member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. He turned down an invitation of George IIIs to become a physician to the King, Erasmus Darwin House, his home in Lichfield, is now a museum dedicated to Erasmus Darwin and his lifes work. A school in nearby Chasetown recently converted to Academy status and is now known as Erasmus Darwin Academy, Darwin was born at Elston Hall, Nottinghamshire near Newark-on-Trent, England, the youngest of seven children of Robert Darwin of Elston, a lawyer, and his wife Elizabeth Hill. The name Erasmus had been used by a number of his family and derives from his ancestor Erasmus Earle and he obtained his medical education at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Whether Darwin ever obtained the degree of MD is not known. Darwin settled in 1756 as a physician at Nottingham, but met little success. A few weeks after his arrival, using a course of treatment. This ensured his success in the new locale, Darwin was a highly successful physician for more than fifty years in the Midlands. George III invited him to be Royal Physician, but Darwin declined, in Lichfield, Darwin wrote didactic poetry, developed his system of evolution, and invented amongst other things, a carriage steering mechanism, a manuscript copier and a speaking machine. Darwin married twice and had 14 children, including two daughters by an employee, and, possibly, at least one further illegitimate daughter. In 1757 he married Mary Howard, a governess, Mary Parker, was hired to look after Robert. In 1782, Mary Sr married Joseph Day, a Birmingham merchant, Darwin may have fathered another child, this time with a married woman. A Lucy Swift gave birth in 1771 to a baby, also named Lucy, who was christened a daughter of her mother and William Swift, Lucy Jr. married John Hardcastle in Derby in 1792 and their daughter, Mary, married Francis Boott, the physician. When Edward Pole died, Darwin married Elizabeth and moved to her home, Radbourne Hall, the hall and village are these days known as Radbourne. In 1782, they moved to Full Street, Derby, harriet Darwin, married Admiral Thomas James Maling Darwin died suddenly on 18 April 1802, weeks after having moved to Breadsall Priory, just north of Derby

13.
Charles Darwin
–
Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, by the 1870s, the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. In modified form, Darwins scientific discovery is the theory of the life sciences. Darwins early interest in nature led him to neglect his education at the University of Edinburgh, instead. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science, puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and he was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories. Darwins work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature, in 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his familys home and he was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin. He was the grandson of two prominent abolitionists, Erasmus Darwin on his fathers side, and Josiah Wedgwood on his mothers side, both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder and he found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, one day, Grant praised Lamarcks evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished by Grants audacity, but had recently read similar ideas in his grandfather Erasmus journals, Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jamesons natural-history course, which covered geology - including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned the classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, as Darwin was unqualified for the Tripos, he joined the ordinary degree course in January 1828. He preferred riding and shooting to studying, when his own exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paleys Evidences of Christianity. In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming out of 178 candidates for the ordinary degree. Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831, inspired with a burning zeal to contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics

14.
Lazzaro Spallanzani
–
His research of biogenesis paved the way for the downfall of preformationism theory, though the final death blow to preformationism was dealt by Pasteur. Spallanzani was born in Scandiano in the province of Reggio Emilia and died in Pavia. He was educated at the Jesuit College and started to study law at the University of Bologna, here, his famous kinswoman, Laura Bassi, was professor of physics and it is to her influence that his scientific impulse has been usually attributed. With her he studied philosophy and mathematics, and gave also great attention to languages. In 1754, at the age of 25 he became professor of logic, metaphysics, in 1762 he was ordained as a priest,1763 he was moved to Modena, where he continued to teach with great assiduity and success, but devoted his whole leisure to natural science. He also became director of the museum, which he greatly enriched by the collections of his many journeys along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In June 1768 Spallanzani was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, during the following year his students exceeded five hundred. A judicial investigation speedily cleared his honour to the satisfaction of some of his accusers, but Spallanzani got his revenge on his principal accuser, a jealous colleague, by planting a fake specimen of a composite species. When his colleague published the remarkable specimen Spallanzani revealed the joke, resulting in wide ridicule, in 1788 he visited Vesuvius and the volcanoes of the Lipari Islands and Sicily, and embodied the results of his researches in a large work, published four years later. He died from cancer on 12 February 1799, in Pavia. After his death, his bladder was removed for study by his colleagues, after which it was placed on display in a museum in Pavia. Yet greater qualities were by no means lacking, Spallanzani researched in 1768 the theory of the spontaneous generation of microbes. Spallanzanis experiment showed that it is not an inherent feature of matter, as the microbes did not re-appear as long as the material was hermetically sealed, he proposed that microbes move through the air and that they could be killed through boiling. Needham argued that experiments destroyed the force that was required for spontaneous generation to occur. Spallanzani paved the way for research by Louis Pasteur, who defeated the theory of spontaneous generation almost a century later, Spallanzani discovered and described animal reproduction, showing that it requires both semen and an ovum. He was the first to perform in vitro fertilization, with frogs, Spallanzani showed that some animals, especially newts, can regenerate some parts of their body if injured or surgically removed. Spallanzani is also credited with the classification of tardigrades, which are one of the most durable extremophiles still to this day. Spallanzani is also famous for extensive experiments on the navigation in darkness by bats

15.
Bat
–
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, Bats do not flap their entire forelimbs, as birds do, but instead flap their spread-out digits, which are very long and covered with a thin membrane or patagium. About 70% of bat species are insectivores, most of the rest are frugivores, or fruit eaters. A few species, such as the bat, feed from animals other than insects, with the vampire bats being hematophagous. Bats are present throughout most of the world, with the exception of cold regions. They perform the vital roles of pollinating flowers and dispersing fruit seeds. Bats are economically important, as they consume insect pests, reducing the need for pesticides, the smallest bat is the Kittis hog-nosed bat, measuring 29–34 mm in length,15 cm across the wings and 2–2.6 g in mass. It is also arguably the smallest extant species of mammal, with the Etruscan shrew being the other contender. The largest species of bat are a few species of Pteropus, the Mexican free-tailed bat is the fastest flying animal in horizontal flight. An older English name for bats is flittermouse, which matches their name in other Germanic languages, middle English had bakke, most likely cognate with Old Swedish natbakka, which may have undergone a shift from -k- to -t- influenced by Latin blatta, moth, nocturnal insect. They were formerly grouped in the superorder Archonta, along with the treeshrews, colugos, genetic studies have now placed bats in the superorder Laurasiatheria, along with carnivorans, pangolins, odd-toed ungulates, even-toed ungulates, and cetaceans. A recent study by Zhang et al. places Chiroptera as a taxon to the clade Perissodactyla. The phylogenetic relationships of the different groups of bats have been the subject of much debate and this hypothesis recognized differences between microbats and megabats and acknowledged that flight has only evolved once in mammals. Most molecular biological evidence supports the view that bats form a single or monophyletic group, in the 1980s, a hypothesis based on morphological evidence was offered that stated the Megachiroptera evolved flight separately from the Microchiroptera. The so-called flying primate hypothesis proposes that, when adaptations to flight are removed, one example is that the brains of megabats show a number of advanced characteristics that link them to primates. Although recent genetic studies support the monophyly of bats, debate continues as to the meaning of available genetic. Genetic evidence indicates that megabats originated during the early Eocene and should be placed within the four lines of microbats. Consequently, two new suborders based on molecular data have been proposed and these two new suborders are strongly supported by statistical tests

16.
Adrien-Marie Legendre
–
Adrien-Marie Legendre was a French mathematician. Legendre made numerous contributions to mathematics, well-known and important concepts such as the Legendre polynomials and Legendre transformation are named after him. Adrien-Marie Legendre was born in Paris on 18 September 1752 to a wealthy family and he received his education at the Collège Mazarin in Paris, and defended his thesis in physics and mathematics in 1770. He taught at the École Militaire in Paris from 1775 to 1780, at the same time, he was associated with the Bureau des Longitudes. In 1782, the Berlin Academy awarded Legendre a prize for his treatise on projectiles in resistant media and this treatise also brought him to the attention of Lagrange. The Académie des Sciences made Legendre an adjoint member in 1783, in 1789 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He assisted with the Anglo-French Survey to calculate the distance between the Paris Observatory and the Royal Greenwich Observatory by means of trigonometry. To this end in 1787 he visited Dover and London together with Dominique, comte de Cassini, the three also visited William Herschel, the discoverer of the planet Uranus. Legendre lost his fortune in 1793 during the French Revolution. That year, he also married Marguerite-Claudine Couhin, who helped him put his affairs in order, in 1795 Legendre became one of six members of the mathematics section of the reconstituted Académie des Sciences, renamed the Institut National des Sciences et des Arts. Later, in 1803, Napoleon reorganized the Institut National, and his pension was partially reinstated with the change in government in 1828. In 1831 he was made an officer of the Légion dHonneur, Legendre died in Paris on 10 January 1833, after a long and painful illness, and Legendres widow carefully preserved his belongings to memorialize him. Upon her death in 1856, she was buried next to her husband in the village of Auteuil, where the couple had lived, Legendres name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. Today, the term least squares method is used as a translation from the French méthode des moindres carrés. Around 1811 he named the gamma function and introduced the symbol Γ normalizing it to Γ = n, in 1830 he gave a proof of Fermats last theorem for exponent n =5, which was also proven by Lejeune Dirichlet in 1828. In number theory, he conjectured the quadratic reciprocity law, subsequently proved by Gauss, in connection to this and he also did pioneering work on the distribution of primes, and on the application of analysis to number theory. His 1798 conjecture of the prime number theorem was proved by Hadamard. He is known for the Legendre transformation, which is used to go from the Lagrangian to the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics, in thermodynamics it is also used to obtain the enthalpy and the Helmholtz and Gibbs energies from the internal energy

17.
Jurij Vega
–
Baron Jurij Bartolomej Vega was a Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer. Born to a family in the small village of Zagorica east of Ljubljana in Slovenia. Vega was educated first in Moravče and later attended school for six years in Ljubljana, studying Latin, Greek, religion, German, history, geography, science. At that time there were about 500 students there and he was a schoolfellow of Anton Tomaž Linhart, a Slovenian writer and historian. Vega finished high school when he was 19, in 1773, after completing his studies at the Lyceum of Ljubljana he became a navigational engineer in 1775. Tentamen philosophicum, a list of questions for his examination, was preserved and is available in the Mathematical Library in Ljubljana. The problems cover logic, algebra, metaphysics, geometry, trigonometry, geodesy, stereometry, geometry of curves, ballistics, Vega left Ljubljana five years after graduation and entered military service in 1780 as a professor of mathematics at the Artillery School in Vienna. At that time he started to sign his last name as Vega, when Vega was 33 he married Josefa Svoboda, a Czech noble from České Budějovice who was 16 at that time. In 1788 he served under Austrian Imperial Field-Marshal Ernst Gideon von Laudon in a campaign against the Turks at Belgrade and his command of several mortar batteries contributed considerably to the fall of the Belgrade fortress. Between 1793 and 1797 he fought French Revolutionaries under the command of Austrian General Dagobert-Sigismond de Wurmser with the European coalition on the Austrian side and he fought at Fort Louis, Mannheim, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Kehl, and Dietz. In 1795 he had two 30-pound mortars cast, with conically drilled bases and a charge, for a firing range up to 3000 metres. The old 60 lb mortars had a range of only 1800 m, in September 1802 Vega was reported missing. After a few days search his body was found, the police report concluded that it was an accident. It is believed that he died on 26 September 1802 in Nußdorf on the Danube, near the Austrian capital, Vega published a series of books of logarithm tables. The first one appeared in 1783, much later, in 1797 it was followed by a second volume that contained a collection of integrals and other useful formulae. His Handbook, which was published in 1793, was later translated into several languages. His major work was Thesaurus Logarithmorum Completus that was first published 1794 in Leipzig and this mathematical table was actually based on Adriaan Vlacqs tables, but corrected a number of errors and extended the logarithms of trigonometric functions for the small angles. An engineer, Franc Allmer, honourable senator of the Graz University of Technology, has found Vegas logarithmic tables with 10 decimal places in the Museum of Carl Friedrich Gauss in Göttingen, Gauss used this work frequently and he has written in it several calculations

18.
John Dalton
–
John Dalton FRS was an English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist. He is best known for his work in the development of modern atomic theory and his research into colour blindness. John Dalton was born into a Quaker family in Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth and he received his early education from his father and from Quaker John Fletcher, who ran a private school in the nearby village of Pardshaw Hall. With his family too poor to support him for long, he began to earn his living at the age of ten in the service of a wealthy local Quaker, Elihu Robinson. It is said he began teaching at a school at age 12. He joined his older brother Jonathan at age 15 in running a Quaker school in Kendal, around age 23 Dalton may have considered studying law or medicine, but his relatives did not encourage him, perhaps because being a Dissenter, he was barred from attending English universities. He acquired much scientific knowledge from informal instruction by John Gough, at age 27 he was appointed teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy at the New College in Manchester, a dissenting academy. He remained there until age 34, when the colleges worsening financial situation led him to resign his post and begin a new career as a tutor for mathematics. During his years in Kendal, Dalton contributed solutions of problems and questions on subjects to The Ladies Diary. In 1787 at age 21 he began to keep a diary in which, during the succeeding 57 years. He also rediscovered George Hadleys theory of atmospheric circulation around this time, Daltons first publication was Meteorological Observations and Essays at age 27 in 1793, which contained the seeds of several of his later discoveries. However, in spite of the originality of his treatment, little attention was paid to them by other scholars, a second work by Dalton, Elements of English Grammar, was published at age 35 in 1801. In fact, a shortage of colour perception in people had not even been formally described or officially noticed until Dalton wrote about his own. Since both he and his brother were colour blind, he recognized that this condition must be hereditary, examination of his preserved eyeball in 1995 demonstrated that Dalton actually had a less common kind of colour blindness, deuteroanopia, in which medium wavelength sensitive cones are missing. The altitude achieved was estimated using a barometer and this meant that, until the Ordnance Survey started publishing their maps for the Lake District in the 1860s, Dalton was one of the few sources of such information. Dalton was often accompanied by Jonathan Otley, who was one of the few other authorities on the heights of the Lake District mountains and he became both an assistant and a friend. These four essays were presented between 2 and 30 October 1801 and published in the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester in 1802. It seems, therefore, that general laws respecting the absolute quantity and he thus enunciated Gay-Lussacs law, published in 1802 at age 36 by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

19.
Glasgow Royal Infirmary
–
Designed by Robert and James Adam, the original Royal Infirmary building was opened in December 1794. The infirmary was built beside Glasgow Cathedral on land that held the ruins of the Bishops Castle, a Royal Charter was obtained in 1791, that granted the Crown-owned land to the hospital. The original Adams building had five floors holding eight wards and an operating room on the fourth floor with a glazed dome ceiling. After a number of buildings were added, the first in 1816, a specialist fever block in 1829. Following the amalgamation of the old St, the original Adams building was replaced in 1914 with a new building designed by James Miller and opened by King George V. In 1924, the block in which Joseph Lister had worked was also torn down to be replaced. In 1948 the hospital became part of NHS Scotland and this would be located on the north of the hospital site overlooking Alexandra Parade and the M8 motorway. The New Building was designed by Sir Basil Spence in a modular fashion, in the end, only the first phase of Spences original design was implemented and was finally completed around 1982. Known as the Queen Elizabeth Building, it incorporated new accommodation for the hospitals teaching departments. Since 1982 the pre-1915 buildings of the Infirmary have been protected as a category B listed building, following the transfer of the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank to public ownership, much of the Cardiology specialism was moved from GRI to the newer facility. The Infirmary now has one thousand beds. Despite the new developments, the original Edwardian buildings continue to be used and are likely to remain in use for the foreseeable future, in 1856, Joseph Lister became an assistant surgeon at the Infirmary and a professor of surgery in 1860. Running the new block, Lister noted that about half of his patients died from sepsis. Having read Louis Pasteurs paper on rotting and fermentation caused by micro-organisms and this experimentation lead to using carbolic acid to clean instruments and hands before and after surgery. Listers methods were picked up around the world and he is now considered the father of modern antisepsis, in 1875, a student of Lister, William Macewen joined the Infirmary surgery as an assistant surgeon, becoming a full surgeon in 1877. His work was immortalised in a number of terms, such as MacEwens triangle, MacEwens operation. A laboratory block, built in 1981 as part of the New Building of the period, in 1896, John Macintyre, Medical Electrician at the Infirmary, opened one of the first radiological departments in the world. In 1908, one of MacEwens students James Hogarth Pringle, developed the Pringle manoeuvre which is used to control bleeding during liver surgery, professor Ian Donald, working in the field of obstetrics and gynaecology, was one of the pioneers of diagnostic ultrasound

20.
Scotland
–
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses

21.
Thomas Beddoes
–
Thomas Beddoes was an English physician and scientific writer. He was born in Shifnal, Shropshire and he was a reforming practitioner and teacher of medicine, and an associate of leading scientific figures. Beddoes was a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and, according to E. S. Shaffer, the poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes was his son. A painting of him by Samson Towgood Roch is in the National Portrait Gallery, Beddoes was born in Shifnal on 13 April 1760 at Balcony House. He was educated at Bridgnorth Grammar School and Pembroke College, Oxford and he enrolled in the University of Edinburghs medical course in the early 1780s. There he was taught chemistry by Joseph Black and natural history by Kendall Walker and he also studied medicine in London under John Sheldon. He took his degree of doctor of medicine at Pembroke College, in 1794, he married Anna, daughter of his associate at the Bristol Pneumatic Institution, Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Their son, poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes, was born in 1803 in Bristol, Beddoes visited Paris after 1786, where he became acquainted with Lavoisier. Beddoes was appointed professor of chemistry at Oxford University in 1788 and his lectures attracted large and appreciative audiences, but his sympathy with the French Revolution excited a clamour against him, he resigned his readership in 1792. In the following year he published the History of Isaac Jenkins, a story which powerfully exhibits the evils of drunkenness, Beddoes addressed tuberculosis, seeking treatments for the disease. He had a clinic in Bristol from 1793 to 1799 and later began the Pneumatic Institution to test various gases for the treatment of tuberculosis, the institution was later changed to a general hospital. Between 1793 and 1799 Beddoes had a clinic at Hope Square, on the principle that butchers seemed to suffer less from tuberculosis than others, he kept cows in a byre alongside the building and encouraged them to breathe on his patients. This became the source of ridicule, amongst claims that animals were kept in the clinics bedrooms. Despite the link he saw between proximity to cows and lower incidence of tuberculosis, he remained sceptical when Edward Jenner began using a cow-derived vaccination for smallpox a few years later. While living in Hotwells he began work on a project to establish an institution for treating disease by the inhalation of different gases and he was assisted by Richard Lovell Edgeworth. In 1799 the Pneumatic Institution was established at Dowry Square, Hotwells and its first superintendent was Humphry Davy, who investigated the properties of nitrous oxide in its laboratory. The original aim of the institution was gradually abandoned, it became a general hospital, Beddoes was a man of great powers and wide acquirements, which he directed to noble and philanthropic purposes. He strove to effect social good by popularizing medical knowledge, a work for which his vivid imagination, in a Letter from Thomas Beddoes, M. D. to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart

22.
James Watt
–
While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology of steam engines. He realised that contemporary engine designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and reheating the cylinder, Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines. Eventually he adapted his engine to produce rotary motion, greatly broadening its use beyond pumping water, Watt attempted to commercialise his invention, but experienced great financial difficulties until he entered a partnership with Matthew Boulton in 1775. The new firm of Boulton and Watt was eventually highly successful, in his retirement, Watt continued to develop new inventions though none was as significant as his steam engine work. He developed the concept of horsepower, and the SI unit of power, James Watt was born on 19 January 1736 in Greenock, Renfrewshire, a seaport on the Firth of Clyde. His father was a shipwright, ship owner and contractor, and served as the towns chief baillie, while his mother, Agnes Muirhead, both were Presbyterians and strong Covenanters. Watts grandfather, Thomas Watt, was a teacher and baillie to the Baron of Cartsburn. Despite being raised by parents, he later on became a deist. Watt did not attend regularly, initially he was mostly schooled at home by his mother but later he attended Greenock Grammar School. He exhibited great manual dexterity, engineering skills and an aptitude for mathematics, while Latin, when he was eighteen, his mother died and his fathers health began to fail. Watt travelled to London to study instrument-making for a year, then returned to Scotland and he made and repaired brass reflecting quadrants, parallel rulers, scales, parts for telescopes, and barometers, among other things. Because he had not served at least seven years as an apprentice, Watt was saved from this impasse by the arrival from Jamaica of astronomical instruments bequeathed by Alexander Macfarlane to the University of Glasgow, instruments that required expert attention. Watt restored them to working order and was remunerated and these instruments were eventually installed in the Macfarlane Observatory. Subsequently three professors offered him the opportunity to set up a workshop within the university. It was initiated in 1757 and two of the professors, the physicist and chemist Joseph Black as well as the famed Adam Smith, at first he worked on maintaining and repairing scientific instruments used in the university, helping with demonstrations, and expanding the production of quadrants. In 1759 he formed a partnership with John Craig, an architect and businessman, to manufacture and sell a line of products including musical instruments and this partnership lasted for the next six years, and employed up to sixteen workers. One employee, Alex Gardner, eventually took over the business, in 1764, Watt married his cousin Margaret Miller, with whom he had five children, two of whom lived to adulthood, James Jr. and Margaret. His wife died in childbirth in 1772, in 1777 he was married again, to Ann MacGregor, daughter of a Glasgow dye-maker, with whom he had two children, Gregory, who became a geologist and mineralogist, and Janet

Outer space, or just space, is the expanse that exists between celestial bodies, including Earth. Outer space is not …

This is an artist's concept of the metric expansion of space, where a volume of the Universe is represented at each time interval by the circular sections. At left is depicted the rapid inflation from the initial state, followed thereafter by steady expansion to the present day, shown at right.

École Polytechnique (French pronunciation: ​[ekɔl pɔlitɛknik]; also known as EP or X) is a French public institution of …

The cadets of Polytechnique rushed to the defence of Paris against the foreign armies in 1814. A statue set in the honour courtyard of the school commemorates this deed. A copy was installed in West Point.

Historical entrance of the École Polytechnique Paris' campus at the junction of the rue de la Montagne Saint-Genevieve and rue Descartes

The plate of the Martin ejector seat of a military aircraft, stating that the design is covered by multiple patents in Britain, South Africa, Canada and "others". Dübendorf Museum of Military Aviation.

The Venetian Patent Statute, issued by the Senate of Venice in 1474, and one of the earliest statutory patent systems in the world.